Blueberry Picking at Buschmann & Winkelmann in Klaistow

Two days of torrential rain in Berlin really and truly put the fear of winter into me. I had flashbacks of being trapped in doors for weeks. So on Saturday morning I resolved two things:1. To go on-line and look for flights to Miami.

2. Get out of the flat and out of Berlin for the day.Off we went to a pick your own (selbst pflücken) place Luisa had recommended in Klaistow.

What a place!  I’ve never seen anything quite like this in Europe.  They’ve made an amusement park out of it.  With giant bouncy domes; enough sand pits to shoot the next Pirates of the Caribbean; a petting zoo; boars; rams; a tree climbing area, complete with hard hats and ropes (Climb Up).

I didn’t find any blueberry toys or asparagus pens but there were strawberry bear statues and strawberry seats.  In their store, they sold blueberry everything: jams, jellies, liqueurs and candies.Buschmann-Winkelmann runs events from April through to December.  White asparagus, strawberries, blueberries, corn and pumpkins feature as highlights throughout the year.

On the 27th of August there is even a Line Dancing workshop (15:30 - 17:30 taught Enrico Adler, the 2007 Line Dancing Champion, yes, apparently there is such a thing.) followed by a Country Feast of barbecue with spare ribs and all the fixings.  I can’t even conceive how such an event, organized by some German folk from the country would go…but I can imagine it being a good laugh. Read more of this post

Foraging in Lobetal, Bernau Berlin

My friend Sylee organized for us to go on a foraging walk last saturday.

Wild plants have to fight to survive, so they pack a much heftier nutritional punch than commercially grown vegetables that are mollycoddled with fertilizers and the like.  Apparently, chimpanzees, our closest relative in the wild, eat a diet of fruit and foraged greens.  While the bulk of our diet is made up of grains, flours and meat.  This was generally the gist of the opening talk given to us by our foraging guide, Elisabeth Westphal.

Then we set out on the dirt paths in the forest around Lobetal Dorf.

After spending about half an hour trying to swallow, dry sometimes hairy leaves that tasted mostly identical and promised to fight “der Schleim” or phlegm.  I started to think “Don’t we live twice as long as chimpanzees, anyway?” and “Well, I’m sure if chimpanzees had a choice between hairy green leaf and say salad nicoise, they would probably choose the latter.” Let’s face it, they would probably eat toothpaste right out of the tube, given the choice.  And if slime is really such a problem, maybe we should call the ghostbusters?

But then we moved on to some more interesting edible greens.  Wood sorrel; a small, clover like plant, made up of three heart-shaped leaves, tender and sour.  I had visions of it on strawberry tarts.  The young shoots of pines, succulent, with a strong resin taste, I could imagine them in a salad of olives, capers and tomatoes.  Wild garlic flowers, a whisper of garlic, which I scattered straight onto the pasta salad I had brought along for lunch. Read more of this post

To Market - Wittenbergplatz Market


I have been looking for a market for a month now. I am becoming familiar with the many fruit and vegetable stands on the outside of Turkish supermarkets but I wanted German products, preferably grown close to Berlin. You know the spiel, seasonal, local - all those virtuous words. It’s August, so now is the time to buy seasonal. I found a great website called Hungry in Berlin, that sadly seems defunct since their last post was in December 2009, that makes reference to this market. Read more of this post

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